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I cold crash my ales to reduce sediment and clear the beer. My understanding is that even as little as a day would do that. But my brewing partner and I have often (due to time constraints) kept them at low temps ~1c for long periods e.g. a month.

We usually use us-05 but I suppose the question goes for any standard ale.

Are there any issues with this length of time?

Are there any benefits?

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What you're doing is lagering the beer, so it would have the same benefits it has for a lager beer. Beer deteriorates much more slowly at cold temperatures.

The only possible problem I know of is that after that much time you might not have enough yeast left in suspension to carbonate the beer in the bottle. If that's what you intend to do, it'd be a good idea to add a little yeast to the bottling bucket.

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    Interesting to note that this is how Kolsch-style beer is typically brewed. Fermented with a medium flocculating German ale yeast then lagered for ~1 month before carbonating and serving. MoreBeer/White Labs suggests that unless the beer has been lagering for more than 4 weeks, there will probably be enough yeast left to carbonate. This is for Kolsch yeast, but US-05 is described as medium flocculating as well, so they could be similar enough the same advice applies.
    – Sloloem
    Dec 18, 2014 at 14:08
  • Yeah, I've done it for up to a month and had no issues with getting carbonation.
    – SimonC
    Dec 18, 2014 at 19:55
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I routinely do this. Namely because of time constraints as well. My normal brewing process involves brewing once a month. So when brewing the next batch I am tending to the previous batch which was fermented and then crash for a month.

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